


starved for air

by xaves



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Silent Hill, Blood, Gruesome Imagery, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaves/pseuds/xaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It was hands at his throat and fangs at his jugular.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Charles and Erik do Silent Hill. Silent Hill does them back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	starved for air

The act of breathing in an empty room, in an empty house, in an empty town, is louder than one might think.  
  
You focus on the wet inhale, the parting of your lips if it’s heavy, the way your tongue flexes, the air rushes in, the expansion of your diaphragm. Feel the way the air hovers on your teeth. Hold it.

Hold it.

Dry exhale. Releasing toxins and waste from the two flimsy bags in your body you call lungs. You can practically feel oxygen in the blood stream, the calm, the release.  
  
Panic is nothing like it. It’s a cacophony, your lungs’ version of fibrillation. Messy, jumpy, uncontrolled and maddening. It destroys silences and broadcasts, bolds, italicizes. It’s a sprint to suck in anything you can, it’s muffled screaming and vocal quivers. There’s no time to release the absolute body-paralyzing terror that’s locked down your muscles and let your pride and honor fall to the floor, to settle into the rusted metal paneling and the blood. Instead, it pushes in deeper, hammer to nail, until you’re cold and deaddeaddeaddead.  
  
Just like-  
  
“Oh god.” Charles whispered between lips that were dry from sucking in air, an impulse rivaled only by the way his fingers clutched around the fireman’s axe and his toes curled painfully in his shoes.  
  
It was his own breathing he listened to. To block out the drips. The sighs. And the lack thereof. The very sensation of being dropped into a bottomless pit. He stared at the single beam of light from the flashlight; batteries were running low. It illuminated a chair, a swathe of white that deepened the black around him to the point of suffocation, a rip in the black cloth. It was fog, it was deep ocean water, it was tar that seeped into his very clothes.  
  
It was hands around his throat and fangs at his jugular.  
  
It was the knowledge that anything could surface from it all, pale faced and screaming, without any warning. That it could happen again. And again. And again. He’d thought about it. He’d _seen_ it. Screeching, legs scrambling with inhuman speed, body twitching, bending over backward, convulsing. It wouldn’t have to chase for very long. Then. _Then._ Long white fingers would dig into his chest, stabbing and slashing downward to lacerate the skin and tissue, to ensure that his vital organs ruptured. Death would be good; if not-  
  
 _Snnnk._  
  
Down the hall, a door shut. A simple click of a lock. And Death himself walked forward, no footsteps to make his presence known.  
  
Another whine dribbled from Charles’s teeth. His legs twitched in grotesque imitations of what they used to be; functioning. Trapped, then.  
  
He thought some more, to muffle the quite pleading ‘no’s’ that sounded like they were dropping from his own stiff lips. He thought about how his body would be dragged to the third level of the basement, left to bleed. Again, death would be preferred by this point, but if his body refused to give out, it would be Shaw he would face next. If the needles sewing his mutated body back together again wouldn’t kill him, if the process of hammer and chisel to his brain didn’t finish the job, then-  
  
“Charles.” A voice sharply forced the nightmare from his mind, kindly bringing him back the metal paneling, the chair, the axe, the breathing, the darkness, the silence, “ _Charles_.”  
  
Air starvation. Charles froze along the wall, eyes swinging on their hinges, flickering up to where Erik stood in the doorway, panting. The flecks of blood along his cheek were wet, the rip in his jeans fresh.  
  
Not dead. A presence so very whole and real and alive in a way that was only a single word of notdead. He tried to respond, but could only cough, axe falling from his nerveless fingers as he reached up, a child to his protector. Stupid relief washed some of the anti-freeze from his veins, mindlessly quick to jump to the illogical conclusion of safety.  
  
Of notdead.  
  
“Shh, it’s okay.” Strong arms scooped him up, nothing less than a doll with its legs shattered; someone had been playing too rough with little Charlie. Someone had left him in the rain, and now look at what happened. “I found a way out. We’re going to be okay.”  
  
“I saw things.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
They left the flashlight. Charles could only watch over Erik’s shoulder as he was carried out. Rich, thick, beautiful footsteps, clear and solid signs of life. He managed a deep inhale, fingers still curled, though the axe was gone, too.  
  
Erik couldn’t have seen the flashlight flicker. Off. _Zzzt._ On.  
  
Only Charles saw the man in the chair in the room, in that swath of white, in that ocean of nothing.  
  
 _Zzzt._  
  
Only Charles saw the chair empty again.

The flashlight turned off once more, whisperless as candles blown out. Battery dead.  
  
Dead.  
  
The act of breathing in an empty room, in an empty house, in an empty town, is louder than one might think.

But.  
  
You can’t hear yourself breathe when you’re screaming. In fact, you can’t hear much of anything at all.


End file.
